


love isn't easy, that's why they call it love

by achilleees



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff and Angst, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Conditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 19:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14983832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achilleees/pseuds/achilleees
Summary: They’re hanging out shooting the shit in the apartment when Keith’s phone starts vibrating on the table. Keith’s in the kitchen poking around in the fridge, so Lance picks it up.“Keith!” Lance calls. “Phone’s ringing.” He reads the nameShiroon the caller ID before Keith yanks the phone out of his hands.





	love isn't easy, that's why they call it love

**Author's Note:**

> season 6 demanded hurt/comfort AUs, don't you think? i wrote this in like an hour so the pacing could be better but i decided perfection was the enemy of good and SEASON 6 DEMANDED HURT/COMFORT GOD DAMMIT.
> 
> this is as much inspired by the movie 'the big sick' as voltron, thus the title.

They’re hanging out shooting the shit in the apartment when Keith’s phone starts vibrating on the table. Keith’s in the kitchen poking around in the fridge, so Lance picks it up.

“Keith!” Lance calls. “Phone’s ringing.” He reads the name _Shiro_ on the caller ID before Keith yanks the phone out of his hands.

“Touchy, touchy,” Florona says, and Keith rolls his eyes and vanishes into his room to answer the call.

“That kid,” Hunk says, munching on a handful of Doritos. “Literal gremlin.”

“‘Bout right,” Lance says, chuckling. He nudges Florona. “Unpause, man, I’m ready to get back to beating the shit out of you.”

“Uh _huh_ ,” says Florona, unpausing their game and madly button mashing in a truly embarrassing attempt to throw down against Lance’s fighter avatar.

A few minutes into this, Keith comes outside, frowning.

“Everything okay?” Hunk says.

“Yeah,” Keith says shortly. “I’m going out.” He pulls on his leather jacket and grabs his keys from the hook by the door.

“You coming back tonight?” Lance says.

“Don’t know,” Keith says, and he walks out the door.

“That kid,” Hunk says.

 

Keith doesn’t get back until late that night, looking a little harried.

“Everything alright?” Lance asks, glancing up from his pan of scrambled eggs.

“Fine,” Keith says, and vanishes into his room.

“That kid,” Lance says to himself.

 

Then he doesn’t see Keith for four days.

 

He plunks his cafeteria tray down next to Allura and says, “Has Keith been going to class the last few days?”

“No,” she says, turning to him. “Is something wrong?”

“You know as much as I do,” he says. “He’s been MIA, I have no idea where he is. Hope he’s not dead in a ditch.” He frowns. It was supposed to be a joke, but with the way that boy drives his motorcycle, it’s uncomfortably close to home.

“I saw him coming out of Ulaz’s office yesterday,” Rolo says. “So unless he died in a ditch in the last 24 hours…”

“Okay, fair, but that doesn’t clear things up in the slightest,” Lance says.

“He’s your roommate, I think you’re allowed to text him to check in,” Nyma says.

Lance nods, pulling out his phone. “It’s really weird - he got a call five days ago and went somewhere, but he came back that night. I wonder if it’s got anything to do with that,” he says as he composes a text.

“Could be a coincidence,” Rolo says.

“Could not be,” Nyma points out.

“Just ask,” Allura says, smiling. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“Not like he needs to go to class anyway,” Nyma says. “God, maybe he _should_ skip the midterm and stop throwing off the curve so much.”

Allura chuckles.

“You laugh,” Nyma grumbles.

Lance’s phone chimes. He looks at it. _It’s fine_ , says Keith’s response to Lance’s paragraph-long inquiry.

“Ugh,” he says.

Nyma leans over. “At least you know he’s alive,” she says helpfully.

“There is that,” he says, shaking his head.

 

Lance opens the front door the next day and nearly brains Keith, who’s bending over tying his shoes in the hallway.

“Whoa!” says Lance, startling back.

Keith glances up.

“Holy shit,” Lance says, all thoughts of teasing Keith for his vanishing act fleeing from his mind. Keith looks _exhausted_. His eyes are bloodshot, his skin sallow, his hair greasy and lank. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Keith says. He hefts his duffle bag. “I just needed a few changes of clothes.”

“Where are you going?” Lance says.

Keith shoots him a flat look.

Lance can’t read Keith’s behavior, doesn’t know him well enough. On anyone else, he would think there was some sort of family emergency, maybe cancer or divorce or a sudden death of a tragically young relative. Keith doesn’t have relatives, though. Keith doesn’t have anyone.

“Is there anything I can do?” Lance says softly.

For whatever reason, Keith flinches at that. He takes a deep breath, visibly schooling his expression to keep Lance from seeing… what? His anger? His sadness?

No, Lance realizes, scrutinizing Keith’s features. To keep Lance from seeing how close he is to cracking. His composure is frayed down to the last strand, and Keith is doing everything in his power to keep it from snapping.

“Let me know,” Lance says. “Seriously.”

“Okay,” Keith mutters, and pushes past him out the door.

Lance bites his lip, watching.

 

Another two days go by. Keith doesn’t come home.

 

Lance storms into Ulaz’s office. “You know what’s wrong,” he says.

Ulaz looks up at him over his glasses. “…Do I? Pardon, but who are you?”

“I’m Lance, I’m Keith’s best friend,” Lance says, even though Keith would rather eat poison than admit that. “Something’s wrong with him. You know what it is.”

Ulaz leans back in his chair.

“You _do_ know!” Lance says. “What is it?”

“Keith is taking a brief leave for personal reasons,” Ulaz says. “All of his professors are aware of the issue. He’s keeping up with his homework and he’s turning in all his assignments on time. You have nothing to be concerned about.”

Lance gapes. “Nothing to be - Bro, Keith Kogane’s taking a leave for _personal reasons_ and you’re telling me I have nothing to be concerned about? Have you met him?”

Ulaz winces slightly. “Granted, it does sound bad when you say it like that,” he says.

“Is he going to be alright?” Lance says.

Ulaz tilts his head.

“I don’t mean ‘is he going to graduate on time,’” Lance grits out, “I mean _is he going to be alright_?”

“I don’t know,” Ulaz says frankly, looking tired all of a sudden. “That boy has lost so much already. I don’t know what will happen if…” He runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Lance.”

Lance swallows hard. “That bad, huh,” he says roughly.

Keith was already an orphan when Lance met him, and Lance has no idea what he was like before the tragic death of his entire family. He sees flashes of it sometimes, though - the smile that he tries to smother, the softness he hides behind gruff words, the way he can’t help but be sucked in by sarcastic banter as hard as he tries to be stoic.

One more loss and that Keith will be gone forever, he senses. Those walls will be titanium hard. He wonders, a lump in his throat, if he’s seen Keith’s very last smile without realizing it.

Ulaz nods.

 

Allura glances at him worriedly all through their politics class. When Coran dismisses them at the end of class, she puts a hand on his arm. “Are you alright?”

Lance gives a start. “What - me? Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You sound like Keith,” she says.

Lance grimaces.

“Do you want to talk?” she says.

“I don’t have much to say,” he says. “I don’t even know what the problem is. I’m just… worried about him, I guess.”

“Have you seen him?” Allura asks, leading him to a bench outside and sitting down next to him.

Lance shrugs. “He drops in to change clothes and shower every other day now, but he’s out the door so fast I can’t tell anything. He’s struggling, though.” He puts his head in his hands. “I hate being helpless,” he says.

“We all do,” Allura says softly. “Keith most of all. Don’t you think that’s exactly the problem?”

Lance nods.

“If he doesn’t want support, there’s not much you can do to force it,” she says. “Just let him know that you’re there if he’s ever ready to lean on you.” She rests her cheek against his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Lance nods again, but he does feel a little better. Companionship does that, he knows, and he wishes Keith knew that too.

 

That night, he walks into the apartment and furrows his brow at the trail of abandoned clothes leading into the bathroom. He pushes open the door and finds Keith sitting on the toilet, trying to keep an ice pack pressed to his face even as he winds a compression bandage around his ankle.

“What happened?” Lance says, immediately hitting his knees and taking over the task of binding Keith’s ankle.

Keith relinquishes the bandage readily, pressing his free hand to his chest like his ribs need the support. “Motorcycle accident,” he mutters.

“Shit!” Lance says.

“I’m fine,” Keith says. “Nothing’s broken.”

“That’s good,” Lance says, but he can’t help but worry. Keith’s got a nasty rash on his face to go with his bruised eye and split lip. His leather jacket is ripped in places, which is the only reason he’s not bleeding more, Lance suspects. “Is anyone else hurt?”

Keith shakes his head. “No one else…” he says vaguely, looking away.

Lance looks up at his face. “Wait, you mean - did you hit someone, or…?”

Keith shakes his head again.

“What happened?” Lance says again, lower.

“Clipped a curb and spun out,” Keith says. “The bike’s fine, I just took a bad fall.”

“Shit,” Lance says. He’s never seen Keith falter on his bike before, but then again, he’s never seen Keith drive under this level of impairment. The bags under his eyes are intense.

He’s vibrating, Lance realizes. Keith is _vibrating_ , like the level of suppressed emotion is pressure cooking to a point that his slender body can’t contain. His eyes are wild.

“I need to go to the hospital,” Keith says, pushing himself to his feet.

Lance doesn’t argue, although he’s seen Keith shake off worse injuries than this before. He’s going to follow Keith’s lead here. “I’ll drive,” he says.

Keith nods.

 

“Not the Garrison,” Keith says, when Lance makes to turn off Comm Ave. “Arus.”

Lance, confused, follows his instructions. Arus isn’t far, thankfully, and only 15 minutes later they pull up in the visitors’ lot. Lance starts to climb out of the car.

Keith puts a hand on his arm, halting him. “You can go,” he says. “I’ll be here for a while.”

“Uh,” Lance says, looking him over. “I don’t even think you’ll need stitches, man.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “You can go,” he says again.

“Wait,” Lance says, finally realizing something. “We’re not here for you, are you? This is where you’ve been disappearing to for the past few weeks.”

Keith clenches his jaw.

“Keith…” Lance says.

“You can go,” Keith bites out, glaring at Lance.

Lance shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be alone right now,” he says quietly.

Keith’s still shaking, and his eyes are still wild, and Lance has never heard his voice crack like that before. However much Keith fights it, Lance’s not going anywhere.

Keith glares at him for another minute, and Lance’s sure he’s about to get hit. Then Keith just - sags, all at once. He tips his head back and breathes in. “Okay,” he says. “Fine.”

 

At the information desk, a nice-looking nurse clucks her tongue at Keith. “I hope the other guy looks worse than you do, honey,” she says.

“I’m fine,” Keith says, robot boy that he is. “Can I have a nametag for my roommate too? Lance McClain.”

“Can I see your ID?” says the nurse - Shay, her ID says.

Lance gets out his ID.

“No change?” Keith says, as she’s printing their nametags.

Shay smiles sadly at him.

“Yeah,” Keith says. He slaps the nametag over a scuff on his jacket and jerks his head at Lance. “You coming or what?”

Lance, still stunned that he’s being allowed access to this, follows.

Keith leads him through the hallway, hobbling slightly on his bad ankle. It’s obvious this is a path he’s taken many times before; he walks confidently with his eyes forward, uninterested in any distraction.

He takes a deep breath in the hallway, then walks into room 314.

Lance follows him, almost nervous about what he’s going to find.

It’s a guy, he sees, about their age, handsome and strong-jawed, his dark hair shocking against the pallor of his skin. He looks as bad as Keith does, sunken-cheeked and washed-out. He’s asleep. Lance doesn’t even know what all the sensors attached to him are for.

“He’s in a coma,” Keith says flatly. “Medically-induced. It was only supposed to be one day.”

Lance looks at him, but Keith’s looking at the guy. Some instinct tells Lance to keep his mouth shut.

“The infection started in his lungs and now it’s spreading to his kidneys. They’re worried it’s going to get to his heart soon,” Keith says. “He’s not responding to the antibiotics.”

There’s a blanket folded on the straight-backed chair next to the bed. No wonder Keith looks exhausted, if this is how he’s been sleeping for weeks.

“You’re his designated support person?” Lance says, having gotten a glimpse of the cheery little sign posted on the information desk detailing the normal visitors’ hours compared to the designated support person’s 24 hour access.

Keith nods.

Again, Lance stays silent. Like coaxing a deer into eating from his hand.

“He doesn’t have anyone else,” Keith says, finally. His voice wavers, but doesn’t crack.

“Who is he?” Lance asks, unable to bite it back anymore.

Keith’s lips twist. “My fiancé,” he says.

Lance stares.

“He’s my boyfriend, dumbass, what do you think?” Keith says, but there’s no heat in his tone. “We’ve talked about getting married, but we decided to wait until after we graduated. It wasn’t the right time.” His voice breaks, and he looks away.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lance asks softly.

Keith shrugs one shoulder.

Keith did always hate to be vulnerable. Lance can tell from the way he looks at the guy that he’s the single, massive chink in his armor. Small wonder Keith didn’t want to talk about him, if it would mean revealing that he’s all too human underneath all the walls.

Plus, he just sucks at small talk.

“When you say he has no one else…” Lance says.

“He has friends,” Keith says. “No family.”

“Do his friends know about you?”

“Some of them,” Keith says.

“Have they been here a lot?” Lance says, looking around, but the hospital room is fairly bare. Just Keith’s bag at his feet and the blanket on his chair.

Keith grimaces, looking away.

“Keith,” Lance says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did you tell them?”

Keith ducks his head guiltily.

 

Lance only ends up making one phone call, to some girl named Pidge who left the most frantic voicemails on the guy’s - Shiro’s - phone. He comes back into the room and finds Keith on his chair with his arms folded on the bed, head settled on top. He can only imagine how many hours Keith has spent in this position in the past weeks.

Keith looks up.

“Pidge said she’d spread the word and handle the visitation schedule,” Lance says. “She seems on top of shit. I think she said she and some guy named Matt would be the first people to visit, and after that they’d stagger it.”

Keith nods.

“I cannot believe you,” Lance says, tossing Shiro’s phone on the bedside table and throwing himself into another empty chair.

Keith scowls. “It went on for too long and I didn’t know how to bring it up,” he says.

“Oh, that makes it okay, then,” Lance says. “Why didn’t you just tell them from the beginning?”

“For the first few days, I thought he’d get better and then he’d tell them himself,” Keith says. “Then he just got worse, and I didn’t… Saying it aloud, admitting that -” He scrubs his hand over his face. “I couldn’t find the words. And then it was just this whole thing.”

“I get that,” Lance admits. “But Keith…”

“I know,” Keith mutters, with a weariness that doesn’t suit him.

Lance really wishes he could give Keith a hug without getting punched.

 

Maybe 20 minutes later, a pair of strangers walk into the room. The short one wearing glasses immediately gravitates to Shiro, shooting Keith a cold look.

But the taller one goes to Keith and bodily lifts him out of his seat and into a hug. Keith puts up a cursory fight before slumping into it.

“It’s bullshit that you thought you had to go through this alone,” he says firmly to Keith. “We may not love him like you do, but we love him. That means we have to take the weight too.”

Keith nods, face buried in the guy’s shoulder.

“You scared?” says the guy.

“Yeah,” says Keith.

The guy presses a kiss to Keith’s forehead. “Yeah,” he says. He pulls back and cups his hand around the back of Keith’s neck, shaking him a little. “What happened to your pretty face, man? You hoping to score sympathy points with Pidge?”

Pidge snorts.

“My bike spun out,” Keith says, tugging out of the guy’s grip - Matt, Lance assumes. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing broken?” Pidge says.

Keith shakes his head.

“Hm,” Pidge says.

Matt laughs. “Hell hath no fury,” he says.

Pidge elbows him, then looks at Keith. “He’ll pull through,” she says quietly. “There’s no point in believing anything else.”

“…Yeah,” says Keith.

 

“So tell me about him,” Lance says, once Keith finally remembered his manners and introduced them. Keith’s dozing now, his head once again pillowed on his folded arms on the bed. “Keith’s a tight-lipped bastard, but… seems like he’s a guy worth knowing.”

“They’re perfect together, for whatever that’s worth,” Matt says. “He knows not to take Keith’s bullshit personally, plus he’s kind of a smug fuck himself. Shiro takes care of the socializing for both of them when he needs to, but they’d both rather spend time with each other than anyone else.”

“Huh,” says Lance, looking down at Keith.

“He’s perceptive,” Pidge says softly, smoothing away a white strand of Shiro’s forelock. “That’s always been one of his gifts. It’s one reason they get along. He reads Keith’s silences.”

Matt nods. “He’s nicer than Keith, but he’s not… _nice_ , you know? Shiro’s a spitfire. Keeps Keith on his toes.”

Lance smiles a little.

“He’s been taking this hard, huh?” Matt says softly, looking down at Keith.

“If he loses him, he’s not going to recover,” Lance says. “Not ever.”

Pidge lets out a long, slow breath.

 

Lance stuffs a random handful of Keith’s clothes from his dresser into a duffel bag, relegated to messenger boy now that he’s in on the secret. He doesn’t mind – if it gives Keith another half hour to sleep instead of traveling back and forth from the hospital, it can only be a good thing.

He reaches into Keith’s sock drawer and his fingers hit something compact and firm. He pulls it out and finds a familiar velvet box, something he’s seen in a thousand ads and rom-coms.

He wonders, throat tightening, if Keith bought it before or after Shiro…

Both ways suck to think about. He can’t even imagine what Keith’s going through, if it’s already hard enough to consider from the outside – the low gut-wrenching simmer of agony, always threatening to boil over, impossible to endure except that he doesn’t have a fucking choice.

Still, something makes him stuff the box into his pocket, just in case.

 

“Hey, Mom,” Lance says on the phone on his way to the hospital, his iPhone wedged between his ear and shoulder so he doesn’t have to take his hands off the wheel.

“Lance? What’s wrong?” she says.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Lance says.

“Do you need money?” she says suspiciously.

There is a slight chance Lance should call home more often. “No, no,” he says, “I just wanted to talk to you.”

She hums, still suspicious.

“Seriously,” Lance says, and he has to clear the roughness from his throat. “My friend is going through a really hard time right now and he doesn’t have a mother and it just made me think of you and I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, in a very different tone. “Is it Keith?”

“Yeah,” Lance says.

“That poor angel,” she says. Lance’s mom loves Keith, because Keith turns into a sugar-sweet brown-nosing tool when she’s around, but Lance has never begrudged him some maternal affection. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Not unless you can work miracles,” Lance says.

“You know that I can’t,” she says. “Can I bake him something? Those brown butter cookies he likes? I know it wouldn’t do much, but he should know that he isn’t – that I’m thinking of him.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “I think he’d like that.”

“Okay,” she says. “What about you? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Lance swallows a lump in his throat. “Just talk to me,” he says. “That’s why I called.”

“Alright,” she says, and her voice is a soft melody that carries him through the rest of the drive.

 

Lance is painstakingly prodding Keith into forcing down bites of food in the hospital cafeteria when a voice comes on the intercom. “Would Mr. Kogane please report to Room 314. Mr. Kogane, to room 314.”

Keith shoots up like a rocket, then freezes. He darts a lost, helpless look at Lance.

Lance grabs his shoulder and squeezes. He knows what they’ll likely be walking into, and there are no words of comfort he can offer.

Keith drags in a shuddering breath, then leaves the room at a half-walk, half-jog, rushing to Shiro’s room as fast as his ankle will let him.

Hot on his heels, Lance follows him through the hallways, impressed and heartbroken at the way Keith doesn’t even pause before turning into the room.

But the doctor is smiling.

She’s _smiling_.

“I thought you might want to be there when we woke him up,” she says gently.

 

Keith doesn’t look away while they pull the various tubes out of Shiro; he doesn’t move when he starts to stir; he doesn’t even seem to be breathing when his eyes flutter open. He stares, frozen, eyes tracking the minute shifts of Shiro’s face with rapt focus.

“What the fuck,” Shiro slurs, and only then does Keith buckle, face in his hands, shaking with the force of his sobs.

Lance comes up behind him, putting his hand on his shoulder.

“Whoaa,” Shiro says, struggling to sit up. “Baby baby what happened? Are you okay? Whoa what kind of drugs am I even on right now?” He lifts his hand, staring at it.

Keith laughs wetly, a definite note of hysteria in it.

“You’ve been asleep for about two weeks,” says the doctor gently. “You had a lot of people worried.”

“Oh nooo!” Shiro says, flailing clumsily in Keith’s direction. “Baby I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t be sorry,” Keith chokes out, and he moves closer and perches on the edge of Shiro’s bed, holding Shiro against him to stabilize him. And because he can’t bear to be away from him for one more second, Lance suspects.

“That is such a dick move though!” Shiro says, eyes earnestly wide. “I know I don’t, like, really grasp the gravity of the situation right now because they got me on the good drugs, but what a shitty thing I did to you!”

Keith presses a kiss to his forehead. “Water under the bridge, kid. Walk it off.”

Lance snorts.

Hearing this, Shiro turns and sees him. “Oh grand, an audience for my flailing incoherence. Who are you? If you film this I will break your phone, I swear.”

“This is Lance,” Keith says.

“Ohh, Lance,” Shiro says knowingly, like that means something to him.

“What’s mullet-head told you about me?” Lance says. “Nothing good, I assume.”

Shiro grins, caught. “Nothing bad, really. Just, like, I’ve been wanting to meet you! Because, like, it is not intuitive that you would be biffles with Keith. The way he describes you, you’re… bottled sunshine. And he’s… gremlin after midnight.”

Lance positively cackles while Keith buries his face in his hands. “Not to downplay the severity of you going into a two-week coma, but this is the best day ever,” Lance says. “You and I are going to be such good friends. We are gonna talk so much affectionate, loving shit about this little man as soon as his back is turned.” He ruffles Keith’s hair.

“I’m here for it,” Shiro declares. “Fist-bump.” He raises a clumsy hand, and Lance acquiesces.

“You can go,” Keith says, but if he’s trying to sound annoyed, he fails miserably. He already looks five years younger, the weight sluicing off his shoulders, worry-lines melting away from the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance says. “Only because I’m sure the doctors have… doctory things for him to do.”

“We do,” the doctor agrees. “We’re going to have to start physical therapy right away if we want to get you back on track. I’ll be back in a few minutes with some nutrient fluids. I assume you’re staying, Keith?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. Lance wishes good luck to anyone who tries to drag him away. “I’m staying.”

“Catch you later,” Lance says, punching his shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Shiro. Try not to slip into any more comas anytime soon.”

“Do my best,” Shiro says.

Lance slips his hand into his pocket to grab his keys, and his fingers bump something hard. “Oh, and – hey,” he says, and palms Keith the ring box. “Just in case.”

Keith’s eyes go wide, then he clears his throat and nods, fingers curling protectively around the velvet box. “Thanks,” he says softly.

“Congrats,” Lance says, grinning, and he slips out, whistling.

“Hey,” he hears Keith say behind him. “This might not be the right time, but…”


End file.
